Competition vs. Cooperation in Video Games

One of the topics that's conspicuously absent from this blog is that of the relationship between violence and video games. The short version of the reason why is that I think the issue is too polarizing and too much tends to get read into findings on either side.

Something I did recently find worth discussing, however, is a kind of inversion of that topic: does playing cooperative games make you less likely to be aggressive and more likely to cooperate with people outside of the game? A big tip of the hat to Wai Yen Tang over at the blog VG Researcher, who recently wrote about three recent studies that explored this topic.

The earliest of these studies was by Mike Schmierbach (2010), who was interested in how game mode (single player, coop, or competitive) affected aggression. He shoved subjects into rooms to play games of Halo on the Xbox either campaign solo, campaign coop, or Slayer mode. After playing for a while, the researcher gave subjects surveys that measured various cognitions and emotional states. One part of the survey involved a word completion task where perplexed respondents were given two letters --KI, DE, BL, etc.-- and then asked to use them to complete any word they liked. If you wrote KILL, DEATH, and BLUDGEON then you got more points than someone who said KISS, DEAN, and BLOKBUSTER. Also, you're a better speller.

Schmierbach found that, as expected, people who played a coop mode were far more likely to come up with non-violent words, which he took as evidence of less "aggressive cognition." Other self reported measures of frustration and arousal (in the general physiological sense) showed similar results.

This is interesting, but like most people I'm generally more interested in actual behavior than simple internal thoughts or emotional states. Fear not, because this year has seen the publication of two other studies that follow the same basic reasoning as Schmierback's research, but which actually look at whether people engage in more cooperative behavior after setting the controller down.

Both Greitmeyer, Traut-Mattausch, and Osswald (2012) and Ewoldson et al. (2012) had subjects start off by playing games like Far Cry, FlatOut, and Halo 2 in either a competitive or cooperative modes. One unlucky group of people in a control condition got to play Tetris and frown at each other. Both sets of studies then had players set down the controllers and take part in social dilemma type games (of the non video game variety) where they had the chance to either cooperate with other players or screw them over.

Ewoldsen et al. found that players who had played the coop video game were more likely to engage in "tit-for-tat" strategies where they would open by cooperating and then either reward or punish the other player depending on if they played competitively or cooperatively in turn. Such a gambit is a very common tactic for players looking to cooperate and maximize outcomes for everyone involved.

Greitemeyer and his colleagues took things a bit further and measured perceptions of things like group cohesion (or dyad cohesion if you want to be pedantic about it; I don't) and trust between players. Again, after teaming up to do violence to some common foe, people felt more cohesion and were more trusting in the subsequent task. And it's important to note that these were all violent games --they were just ones that could be played in a helping, cooperative context.

There are some interesting takeaways and ideas from this in terms of crafting your own gaming experiences and for developers looking to capitalize on these findings. One is that timing matters. These effects are typically short lived, so if you want to hit players up for things that require cohesion, trust, and cooperation do it right after they've collaborated or interacted with each other in a cooperative way. It's the ideal time to ask them to do things like send/accept friends requests, bestow gifts, heal each other, join groups, trade items, and so forth. Just finished a quest in a pickup group or successfully defended a capture point with the help of a new buddy? That may be the perfect time to pop up a prompt to "Rate this player" or to trade crafting materials. Better than after one of you won a dogfight or shootout against each other.

Similarly, if you're a player try not to let the fact that you're competing against someone keep you from cooperating with them next round or accepting their friend request. They may be a pretty cool dude or gal once you're wearing the same colored uniforms.

Greitemeyera, T., Traut-Mattauschb, E., Osswaldc, S, (2012). How to ameliorate negative effects of violent video games on cooperation: Play it cooperatively in a team. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 (4), 1465-1470.

Nice to see Co-operative gaming discussed. As a former gamer, I have a lot of mixed feelings about online gaming in general. I really got tired with the high amount of 'trash talk' in game lobbies and in-game, particularly games like Halo2, COD and other 1st person shooter games. Our teams typically would beat the younger hyper-competitive teams, entirely b/c of strategy and cooperation in Big-Game especially. People would fight eachother on the same team for weapons, and even kill team mates sometimes with they typical, "You ********G newb, I'm the best with sniper"ETC.

The high volume of demeaning, racist, vulgar crap in certain games sometimes amazed me--sometimes by kids that were clearly not even in high school yet.

Cooperative gaming is what made Roleplaying games fun as a Kid, a chance to work as a team for common goals, rather than focusing on Egocentric need fulfillment via games. Sadly, I see far too many kids that's primary source of confidence in life is how "uber" they are at a game, and often the most skilled in my experience were they most annoying and demeaning. Online gaming cultures are interesting at times, but the anonymous nature of it and kids quickly being socialized by certain games to trash talk, even if just started as a defense vs. others is the thing about gaming I truly found disheartening and frustrating. Good news, is I only had to decide to not play co-operative games online with people ever again--problem solved, but not too many kids are willing to do that.

Most of my most negative experience is definitely from online gaming. I've had good ones too but those come from planning to play with certain groups instead of completely anonymous players. Talking on forums or other outlets before playing helps build camaraderie. This is from every genre I've played online.

I fell in love with the FGC(Fighting Game Community) every since I've been competing offline. It's not perfect, there's still drama and politics but there's still a sense of helping one another. When I say FGC, I mean actual players that play the game and travel and meet face to face. They're very open minded and love to play, most are at least. I separate the online and offline scenes as they are quite different. The online scene is a lot less accepting and much more vulgar.

The offline scene has done many great things.

The Level|Up guys did a charity tournament for what happened in Japan last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0J2TdUjGw

Daniel "Clockw0rk" Maniago had a charity tournament a few months ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVXzvfXJU10

There's a 24 hour charity tournament going on today from the NorCal guys run by Jenkins "Dromstruction" Mitchell today for Chicks in Crisis and Second Harvest Food Bank.
http://dromstruction.com/persona-4-arena-24-hour-charity-event-is-now-live

Interesting, and thanks for the links! The FGC has gone under a microscope lately with all the super misogynistic stuff coming out of EVO earlier this year, but like most communities I suspect that it's varied and there are both bastards and saints among it. And everyone in between. :)

And you know, I still have pretty good luck with randoms and pickup groups in many kinds of games. Maybe it's because I don't play the super popular games like Call of Duty, but I generally get along with the chatty folks out there. Else I just mute them and problem solved.

“One of the topics that's conspicuously absent from this blog is that of the relationship between violence and video games. The short version of the reason why is that I think the issue is too polarizing and too much tends to get read into findings on either side.”

Personally I disagree. I think the reason that topic has been so conspicuously absent is that the violent video game industry has been very effective at portraying anyone who argues for a link as someone who hates freedom, is a right-wing Christian nut, and also a prude (in other words, very uncool). And since no one wants to be uncool (even science types), the topic is left alone or treated with kids gloves, even by those who otherwise love controversy.

“Again, after teaming up to do violence to some common foe, people felt more cohesion and were more trusting in the subsequent task. And it's important to note that these were all violent games --they were just ones that could be played in a helping, cooperative context.”

Very interesting study, definitely worth following up. Perhaps in the future, the effects of violent video games will have to be divided up between violent cooperative gaming (such as MMORPGs), and violent single-player violent video games (such as first-person and third-person shooter games).

Already though, I've seen people argue that these cooperation studies prove that critics of violent video games have been wrong all along (and that parents should just relax and let their kids play whatever they like).

Well, I was really speaking to my own reasons on this blog and my other one at psychologyofgames.com. Personally I just don't want to stir all that up, especially when the debates are so vibrant elsewhere.

Not sure who this "the violent video game industry" is either. I don't think there's a monolithic group out there advocating for makers of violent games.